The United States has approximately one million kilometers of natural gas distribution pipelines, and also has an uncountable amount of other kinds of pipelines. These networks have been aging, and this aging may cause a great concern to the industries. Much of the network of pipelines is formed of iron and steel pipe which is now considered to be technologically obsolete.
It may be desirable to assess the state of various pipes in the network. A failed pipeline may cause an outage, which may be very costly since the utility may be responsible for re-lighting all of the pilot lights which are caused by the outage. In addition, a failed pipeline may cause disruptive urban excavation.
Leaks and reductions of pipe wall thickness, may be mostly the result of chemical reactions between iron in the pipe and chemicals in the soil and groundwater. A magnetic flux leakage sensor may be used for determining the average wall thickness of an iron or steel pipe.
The present application teaches an intelligent robotic gas pipe explorer. The device may include operating instruments and sensors that may detect leaks, wall thinning, corrosion, and other difficulties in the pipe.
In an embodiment, the explorer may be operated wirelessly in an operating pipeline. Information from the exploration is relayed through wireless communications that rely on the waveguide characteristics of the pipeline. For example, this information may be transmitted at GHz frequencies. This system may also use shape reconfigurability to enhance its mobility and to overcome traversal problems such as pipe narrowing, pieces of extending welds, and the like. The device may use an imaging camera for visual inspection. The device may extract power from the flowing gas using a power-generating turbine.
Another embodiment uses a wired device, connected and powered by a tether. The wired device may also communicate over that wired line.